Family resemblance (German: Familienähnlichkeit) is a philosophical idea made popular by Ludwig Wittgenstein, with the best known exposition given in his posthumously published book Philosophical Investigations (1953).[1] It argues that things which could be thought to be connected by one essential common feature may in fact be connected by a series of overlapping similarities, where no one feature is common to all of the things. Games, which Wittgenstein used as an example to explain the notion, have become the paradigmatic example of a group that is related by family resemblances, it has been suggested that Wittgenstein picked up the idea and the term from Nietzsche, who had been using it, as did many nineteenth century philologists, when discoursing about language families.[2]

The first occurrence of the term "Family resemblance" is found in a note from 1930, commenting on Spengler's ideas,[3] the notion itself features widely in Wittgenstein's later work, and in the Investigations it is introduced in response to questions about the general form of propositions and the essence of language – questions which were central to Wittgenstein throughout his philosophical career. This suggests that family resemblance was of prime importance for Wittgenstein's later philosophy; however, like many of his ideas, it is hard to find precise agreement within the secondary literature on either its place within Wittgenstein's later thought or on its wider philosophical significance.

Since the publication of the Investigations, the notion of family resemblance has been discussed extensively not only in the philosophical literature, but also, for example, in works dealing with classification where the approach is described as "polythetic", distinguishing it from the traditional approach known now as "monothetic". Prototype theory is a recent development in cognitive science where this idea has also been explored. As the idea gains popularity, earlier instances of its occurrence are rediscovered e.g. in 18th century taxonomy,[4] in the writings of Vygotsky[5] or Tatarkiewicz.[6]

Contents

The local context where the topic of family resemblances appears is Wittgenstein's critique of language; in Philosophical Investigations §65-71 the plurality of language uses is compared to the plurality of games. Next it is asserted that games have common features but no one feature is found in all of them, the whole argument has become famous under the heading 'language games'.

The larger context in which Wittgenstein's philosophy is seen to develop considers his uncompromising opposition to essences, mental entities and other forms of idealism which were accepted as a matter of fact in continental philosophy at the turn of the preceding century; in his view, the main cause for such errors is language and its uncritical use. In the received view, concepts, categories or classes are taken to rely on necessary features common to all items covered by them. Abstraction is the procedure which acknowledges this necessity and derives essences, but in the absence of a single common feature, it is bound to fail.

The term "Family resemblance" as feature of Wittgenstein's philosophy owes much to its translation in English. Wittgenstein, who wrote mostly in German, used the compound word 'Familienähnlichkeit', but as he lectured and conversed in English he used 'family likeness' (e.g. The Blue Book, p. 17,33; The Brown Book,§66). However, in the Philosophical Investigations the separate word 'Ähnlichkeit' has been translated as 'similarity' (§§11,130,185,444) and on two occasions (§§9,90) it is given as 'like', the German family-word is common and it is found in Grimm's dictionary; a rare occurrence of 'family likeness' has been noted in a lecture by J. F. Moulton in 1877.[7]

Games are the main example considered by Wittgenstein in his text where he also mentions numbers and makes an analogy with a thread, he develops his argument further by insisting that in such cases there is not a clear cut boundary but there arises some ambiguity if this indefiniteness can be separated from the main point.

In §66 Wittgenstein invites us to

consider for example the proceedings that we call "games"...[to] look and see whether there is anything common to all.

And we can go through the many, many other groups of games in the same way; we can see how similarities crop up and disappear.

And the result of this examination is: we see a complicated network of similarities overlapping and criss-crossing: sometimes overall similarities.

The following §67 begins by stating:

I can think of no better expression to characterize these similarities than "family resemblances"; for the various resemblances between members of a family: build, features, colour of eyes, gait, temperament, etc. etc. overlap and criss-cross in the same way. – And I shall say: "games" form a family.

and extends the illustration

for instance the kinds of number form a family in the same way. Why do we call something a "number"? Well, perhaps because it has a direct relationship with several things that have hitherto been called number; and this can be said to give it an indirect relationship to other things we call the same name. And we extend our concept of number as in spinning a thread we twist fibre on fibre. And the strength of the thread does not reside in the fact that some one fibre runs through its whole length, but in the overlapping of many fibres.

The problem of boundaries begins in §68

I can give the concept 'number' rigid limits ... that is, use the word "number" for a rigidly limited concept, but I can also use it so that the extension of the concept is not closed by a frontier. And this is how we do use the word "game", for how is the concept of a game bounded? What still counts as a game and what no longer does? Can you give the boundary? No. You can draw one; for none has so far been drawn. (But that never troubled you before when you used the word "game".)

There are some simple models[5][8] which can be derived from the text of §66-9, the most simple one, which fits Wittgenstein's exposition, seems to be the sorites type. It consists in a collection of items Item_1, Item_2, Item_3... described by features A, B, C, D, ...:

In this example, which presents an indefinitely extended ordered family, resemblance is seen in shared features: each item shares three features with his neighbors e.g. Item_2 is like Item_1 in respects B, C, D, and like Item_3 in respects C, D, E. Obviously what we call 'resemblance' involves different aspects in each particular case, it is also seen to be of a different 'degree' and here it fades with 'distance': Item_1 and Item_5 have nothing in common.

Another simple model is described as:

Item_1: A B CItem_2: B C DItem_3: A C DItem_4: A B D
It exhibits the presence of a constant degree of resemblance and the absence of a common feature without extending to infinity.

Wittgenstein rejects the disjunction of features or 'properties', i.e. the set {A,B,C,D,..}, as something shared by all items. He admits that a 'sharing' is common to all but deems that it is only verbal:

if someone wished to say: "There is something common to all these constructions – namely the disjunction of all their common properties" – I should reply: Now you are only playing with words. One might as well say: "Something runs through the whole thread – namely the continuous overlapping of those fibres".

Thomas Kuhn uses Wittgenstein's concept in chapter V ('The Priority of Paradigms) of his famous The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962). Paradigms are not reducible to single discoverable sets of scientific rules, but consist of assumptions that relate to other rules that are recognized by parts of a scientific community.[9]

Renford Bambrough proposed that 'Wittgenstein solved what is known as "the problem of universals"' and said of his solution (as Hume said of Berkeley's treatment of the same topic) that it is "one of the greatest and most valuable discoveries that has been made of late years in the republic of letters".[12] His view provided the occasion for numerous further comments.[13]

Rodney Needham explored family resemblances in connection with the problem of alliance and noted their presence in taxonomy where they are known as a polythetic classification.[5]

Eleanor Rosch used family resemblances in her cognitivist studies.[14] Other cognitive research[15] has shown that children and even rhesus monkeys tend to use family resemblance relationships rather than explicit rules[16] when learning categories.

Wittgenstein's suggestion (PI, §66) about the impossibility of formulating a definition of games portrays a predicament for disciplines, which entail games as their subject matter, because it denies the possibility to know what games are. One possible solution is to point out that Wittgenstein merely acts out his failing attempt to define the concept of game, because he wanted to demonstrate a mechanism of language, he wasn't particularly concerned about games, nor about the concept of 'game', but he was interested in the consequence of a definitory failure. The demonstration aims to show, that there is no reason to search for real definitions, which describe essential attributes of things, but rather nominal definitions, which describe the use of the term in a community, he connected this idea to language games – lingual expressions combined with action – as a more adequate alternative to explain the function of language. Confusing this is his choice to denominate the approach (PI, §7) as 'language games', further fueling the impression that he provides insights about the concept of game. Wittgenstein wasn't interested in games but in language, therefore his theories and examples are only superficially related to academic disciplines with games as subject matter.

Philosophical Investigations is the primary text used in discussing family resemblances, even though the topic appears also in other works by Wittgenstein, notably The Brown Book.[17] Many contributions to the discussion are by people involved in philosophical research but concerned with more pragmatic questions such as taxonomy[4] or information processing.[18]Hans Sluga has observed that "the notion of family resemblance... draws on two quite different sets of ideas, two different vocabularies, but treats them as if they were one and the same. The first is the vocabulary of kinship, of descent, of some sort of real and causal connection.. the second is that of similarity, resemblance, affinity and correspondence."[19]

The main focus for criticism is[citation needed] the notion of similarity, which is instrumental for family resemblance. A similarity is always found for two arbitrarily selected objects, or a series of intermediaries can link them into a family, this problem has been known as underdeterminacy or open ended texture.[citation needed] Admittedly infinity is only potential [clarification needed] but for any finite family some common element can be pointed out, especially if relational properties are taken into consideration. [example needed] Wittgenstein's insistence that boundaries do not really exist but can be traced arbitrarily has been described as conventionalism and more generally the acceptance of his conception has been seen to present a refined nominalism.[20][further explanation needed]

^Wittgenstein L.,(1998) Culture and Value, London:Blackwell, p 14. Spengler's influence in this and other forms has been considered in papers published after this collection of notes became available, see e.g. DeAngelis W., "Wittgenstein and Spengler," Dialogue 33 (1994):41–61

^The connection between rule following and applying or extending a concept has been noted early in the discussion of family resemblances, see e.g. Pompa L., 'Family resemblance: a reply', The Philosophical Quarterly, 18 (1968) 347

1.
Ludwig Wittgenstein
–
Ludwig Josef Johann Wittgenstein was an Austrian-British philosopher who worked primarily in logic, the philosophy of mathematics, the philosophy of mind, and the philosophy of language. From 1929 to 1947, Wittgenstein taught at the University of Cambridge, during his lifetime he published just one slim book, the 75-page Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, one article, one book review and a childrens dictionary. His voluminous manuscripts were edited and published posthumously, Philosophical Investigations appeared as a book in 1953, and has since come to be recognised as one of the most important works of philosophy in the twentieth century. His teacher Bertrand Russell described Wittgenstein as the most perfect example I have ever known of genius as traditionally conceived, passionate, profound, intense, born in Vienna into one of Europes richest families, he inherited a large fortune from his father in 1913. Three of his brothers committed suicide, with Wittgenstein contemplating it too and he described philosophy as the only work that gives me real satisfaction. His philosophy is divided into an early period, exemplified by the Tractatus. The later Wittgenstein rejected many of the assumptions of the Tractatus, ludwigs grandmother Fanny was a first cousin of the famous violinist Joseph Joachim. They had 11 children—among them Wittgensteins father, Karl Otto Clemens Wittgenstein became an industrial tycoon, and by the late 1880s was one of the richest men in Europe, with an effective monopoly on Austrias steel cartel. Thanks to Karl, the Wittgensteins became the second wealthiest family in Austria-Hungary, however, their wealth diminished due to post-1918 hyperinflation and subsequently during the Great Depression, although even as late as 1938 they owned 13 mansions in Vienna alone. Wittgensteins mother was Leopoldine Maria Josefa Kalmus, known among friends as Poldi and her father was a Bohemian Jew and her mother was Austrian-Slovene Catholic—she was Wittgensteins only non-Jewish grandparent. She was an aunt of the Nobel Prize laureate Friedrich Hayek on her maternal side, Wittgenstein was born at 8,30 pm on 26 April 1889 in the so-called Wittgenstein Palace at Alleegasse 16, now the Argentinierstrasse, near the Karlskirche. Karl and Poldi had nine children in all, the children were baptized as Catholics, received formal Catholic instruction, and raised in an exceptionally intense environment. The family was at the center of Viennas cultural life, Bruno Walter described the life at the Wittgensteins palace as an atmosphere of humanity. Karl was a patron of the arts, commissioning works by Auguste Rodin and financing the citys exhibition hall and art gallery. Gustav Klimt painted Wittgensteins sister for her portrait, and Johannes Brahms. For Wittgenstein, who highly valued precision and discipline, contemporary music was never considered acceptable at all, music, he said to his friend Drury in 1930, came to a full stop with Brahms, and even in Brahms I can begin to hear the noise of machinery. He also learnt to play the clarinet in his thirties, a fragment of music, composed by Wittgenstein, was discovered in one of his 1931 notebooks, by Michael Nedo, Director of the Wittgenstein Institute in Cambridge. Three of the five brothers would commit suicide

2.
Truth function
–
In logic, a truth function is a function that accepts truth values as input and produces a truth value as output, i. e. the input and output are all truth values. On the contrary, modal logic is non-truth-functional, a logical connective is truth-functional if the truth-value of a compound sentence is a function of the truth-value of its sub-sentences. A class of connectives is truth-functional if each of its members is, some connectives of a natural language, such as English, are not truth-functional. Connectives of the form x believes that, are typical examples of connectives that are not truth-functional. In both cases, each component sentence is false, but each compound sentence formed by prefixing the phrase Mary believes that differs in truth-value and that is, the truth-value of a sentence of the form Mary believes that. Is not determined solely by the truth-value of its component sentence, the class of classical logic connectives used in the construction of formulas is truth-functional. Their values for various truth-values as argument are usually given by truth tables, truth-functional propositional calculus is a formal system whose formulae may be interpreted as either true or false. In two-valued logic, there are sixteen possible truth functions, also called Boolean functions, truth and falsehood is denoted as 1 and 0 in the following truth tables, respectively, for sake of brevity. Because a function may be expressed as a composition, a logical calculus does not need to have dedicated symbols for all of the above-mentioned functions to be functionally complete. This is expressed in a propositional calculus as logical equivalence of certain compound statements, for example, classical logic has ¬P ∨ Q equivalent to P → Q. The conditional operator → is therefore not necessary for a logical system if ¬ and ∨ are already in use. A minimal set of operators that can express every statement expressible in the propositional calculus is called a minimal functionally complete set, a minimally complete set of operators is achieved by NAND alone and NOR alone. The following are the minimal functionally complete sets of operators whose arities do not exceed 2, some truth functions possess properties which may be expressed in the theorems containing the corresponding connective. Commutativity, The operands of the connective may be swapped without affecting the truth-value of the expression, distributivity, A connective denoted by · distributes over another connective denoted by +, if a · = + for all operands a, b, c. Idempotence, Whenever the operands of the operation are the same, in other words, the operation is both truth-preserving and falsehood-preserving. Absorption, A pair of connectives ∧, ∨ satisfies the law if a ∧ = a for all operands a, b. A set of functions is functionally complete if and only if for each of the following five properties it contains at least one member lacking it, monotonic. Bn ∈ such that a1 ≤ b1, a2 ≤ b2, affine, Each variable always makes a difference in the truth-value of the operation or it never makes a difference

3.
Logical truth
–
Logical truth is one of the most fundamental concepts in logic, and there are different theories on its nature. A logical truth is a statement which is true, and remains true under all reinterpretations of its components other than its logical constants and it is a type of analytic statement. All of philosophical logic can be thought of as providing accounts of the nature of logical truth, Logical truths are truths which are considered to be necessarily true. This is to say that they are considered to be such that they could not be untrue and it must be true in every sense of intuition, practices, and bodies of beliefs. However, it is not universally agreed that there are any statements which are necessarily true, a logical truth is considered by some philosophers to be a statement which is true in all possible worlds. This is contrasted with facts which are true in this world, as it has historically unfolded, later, with the rise of formal logic a logical truth was considered to be a statement which is true under all possible interpretations. Empiricists commonly respond to this objection by arguing that logical truths, are analytic, Logical truths, being analytic statements, do not contain any information about any matters of fact. Other than logical truths, there is also a class of analytic statements. The characteristic of such a statement is that it can be turned into a logical truth by substituting synonyms for synonyms salva veritate, can be turned into No unmarried man is married. By substituting unmarried man for its synonym bachelor, in his essay, Two Dogmas of Empiricism, the philosopher W. V. O. Quine called into question the distinction between analytic and synthetic statements, in his conclusion, Quine rejects that logical truths are necessary truths. Instead he posits that the truth-value of any statement can be changed, including logical truths, considering different interpretations of the same statement leads to the notion of truth value. The simplest approach to truth values means that the statement may be true in one case, in one sense of the term tautology, it is any type of formula or proposition which turns out to be true under any possible interpretation of its terms. This is synonymous to logical truth, however, the term tautology is also commonly used to refer to what could more specifically be called truth-functional tautologies. Not all logical truths are tautologies of such a kind, Logical constants, including logical connectives and quantifiers, can all be reduced conceptually to logical truth. For instance, two statements or more are logically incompatible if, and only if their conjunction is logically false, one statement logically implies another when it is logically incompatible with the negation of the other. A statement is true if, and only if its opposite is logically false. The opposite statements must contradict one another, in this way all logical connectives can be expressed in terms of preserving logical truth

4.
Philosophical Investigations
–
He alleges that the problems are traceable to a set of related assumptions about the nature of language, which themselves presuppose a particular conception of the essence of language. In this picture of language we find the roots of the following idea and this meaning is correlated with the word. It is the object for which the word stands, Philosophical Investigations was not ready for publication when Wittgenstein died in 1951. G. E. M. Anscombe translated Wittgensteins manuscript into English, there are two popular English editions, both translated by Anscombe, Prentice Hall,1999 Blackwell Publishers,2001. This edition includes the original German text in addition to the English translation, the text is divided into two parts, consisting of what Wittgenstein calls, in the preface, Bemerkungen, translated by Anscombe as remarks. In the first part, these remarks are more than a paragraph long and are numbered sequentially. In the second part, the remarks are longer and numbered using Roman numerals, in the index, remarks from the first part are referenced by their number rather than page, however, references from the second part are cited by page number. The comparatively unusual nature of the part is due to the fact that it comprises notes that Wittgenstein may have intended to re-incorporate into the first part. Subsequent to his death it was published as a Part II in the first, second, in standard references, a small letter following a page, section, or proposition number indicates a paragraph. Philosophical Investigations is unique in its approach to philosophy, the following is an excerpt from the first entry in the book that exemplifies this method. think of the following use of language, I send someone shopping. Well, I assume that he acts as I have described, explanations come to an end somewhere. —But what is the meaning of the word five. No such thing was in here, only how the word five is used. This example is typical of the books style and we can see each of the steps in Wittgensteins method, The reader is presented with a thought experiment, someone is sent shopping with an order on a slip. Wittgenstein supplies the response of an imagined interlocutor and he usually puts these statements in quotes to distinguish them from his own, But how does he know where and how he is to look up the word red and what he is to do with the word five. Or Wittgenstein may indicate such a response by beginning with a dash, as he does before the question above. Wittgenstein shows why the reaction was misguided, No such thing was in question here. Similarly, Wittgenstein often uses the device of framing many of the remarks as a dialogue between himself and a disputant, for example, Remark 258 proposes a thought experiment in which a certain sensation is associated with the sign S written in a calendar. Through such thought experiments, Wittgenstein attempts to get the reader to come to certain difficult philosophical conclusions independently, the Investigations deals largely with the difficulties of language and meaning

5.
Language-game (philosophy)
–
A language-game is a philosophical concept developed by Ludwig Wittgenstein, referring to simple examples of language use and the actions into which the language is woven. In his work, Philosophical Investigations, Ludwig Wittgenstein regularly referred to the concept of language-games, Wittgenstein rejected the idea that language is somehow separate and corresponding to reality, and he argued that concepts do not need to be clearly defined to be meaningful. The concept was intended to bring into prominence the fact that the speaking of language is part of an activity, or a form of life, the term language-game is used to refer to, Fictional examples of language use that are simpler than our own everyday language. Simple uses of language with which children are first taught language, specific regions of our language with their own grammars and relations to other language-games. All of a natural language seen as comprising a family of language-games and these meanings are not separated from each other by sharp boundaries, but blend into one another. The concept is based on the analogy, The rules of language are analogous to the rules of games. The analogy between a language and a game demonstrates that words have meaning depending on the uses made of them in the various and multiform activities of human life. The classic example of a language-game is the so-called builders language introduced in §2 of the Philosophical Investigations, Later this and there are added, and a, b, c, d as numerals. An example of its use, builder A says d — slab — there and points, and builder B counts four slabs, the builders language is an activity into which is woven something we would recognize as language, but in a simpler form. This language-game resembles the simple forms of language taught to children, jean-François Lyotard explicitly drew upon Wittgensteins concept of language-games in developing his own notion of metanarratives in The Postmodern Condition. However, Wittgensteins concept is, from its inception, of a plurality of language games and this is an application of the language-game concept in the area of information systems and knowledge-based system design. Forms of Life and Language Games

6.
Analytic philosophy
–
Analytic philosophy is a style of philosophy that became dominant in English-speaking countries at the beginning of the 20th century. In the United Kingdom, United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and Scandinavia, as a historical development, analytical philosophy refers to certain developments in early 20th-century philosophy that were the historical antecedents of the current practice. Central figures in historical development are Bertrand Russell, Ludwig Wittgenstein, G. E. Moore, Gottlob Frege. This may be contrasted with the traditional foundationalism, which considers philosophy to be a science that investigates the fundamental reasons. Consequently, many philosophers have considered their inquiries as continuous with, or subordinate to. This is an attitude that begins with John Locke, who described his work as that of an underlabourer to the achievements of scientists such as Newton. During the twentieth century, the most influential advocate of the continuity of philosophy with science was Willard Van Orman Quine, the principle that the logical clarification of thoughts can be achieved only by analysis of the logical form of philosophical propositions. The logical form of a proposition is a way of representing it, to reduce it to simpler components if necessary, however, analytic philosophers disagree widely about the correct logical form of ordinary language. The neglect of generalized philosophical systems in favour of more restricted inquiries stated rigorously and it is thus able, in regard to certain problems, to achieve definite answers, which have the quality of science rather than of philosophy. Its methods, in respect, resemble those of science. Analytic philosophy is often understood in contrast to other traditions, most notably continental philosophies such as existentialism and phenomenology. British idealism, as taught by such as F. H. Bradley and Thomas Hill Green. With reference to this basis the initiators of analytic philosophy, G. E. Moore and Bertrand Russell. Inspired by developments in logic, the early Russell claimed that the problems of philosophy can be solved by showing the simple constituents of complex notions. An important aspect of British idealism was logical holism — the opinion that the aspects of the world cannot be wholly without also knowing the whole world. This is closely related to the opinion that relations between items are actually internal relations, that is, properties internal to the nature of those items. Russell, along with Wittgenstein, in response promulgated logical atomism, Frege was also influential as a philosopher of mathematics in Germany at the beginning of the 20th century. Like Frege, Russell attempted to show that mathematics is reducible to logical fundamentals in The Principles of Mathematics, later, his book written with Whitehead, Principia Mathematica, encouraged many philosophers to renew their interest in the development of symbolic logic

7.
Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language
–
Kripke writes that this paradox is the most radical and original skeptical problem that philosophy has seen to date. He argues that Wittgenstein does not reject the argument that leads to the rule-following paradox, Kripke expresses doubts in Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language as to whether Wittgenstein would endorse his interpretation of the Philosophical Investigations. Wittgenstein scholar David G. Stern considers the book to be the most influential, Kripke gives a mathematical example to illustrate the reasoning that leads to this conclusion. Suppose that you have never added numbers greater than 50 before, further, suppose that you are asked to perform the computation 68 +57. Our natural inclination is that you will apply the function as you have before. But now imagine that a bizarre skeptic comes along and argues and that nothing justifies you in giving this answer rather than another. After all, the reasons, by hypothesis you have never added numbers greater than 50 before. Your past usage of the function is susceptible to an infinite number of different quus-like interpretations. It appears that every new application of plus, rather than being governed by a strict, the obvious objection to this procedure is that the addition function is not defined by a number of examples, but by a general rule or algorithm. But then the algorithm itself will contain terms that are susceptible to different and incompatible interpretations, in short, rules for interpreting rules provide no help, because they themselves can be interpreted in different ways. Or, as Wittgenstein himself puts it, any interpretation still hangs in the air along with what it interprets, interpretations by themselves do not determine meaning. Similar skeptical reasoning can be applied to any word of any human language, the power of Kripkes example is that in mathematics the rules for the use of expressions appear to be defined clearly for an infinite number of cases. Kripke, following David Hume, distinguishes two types of solution to skeptical paradoxes. Straight solutions dissolve paradoxes by rejecting one of the premises that lead to them, skeptical solutions accept the truth of the paradox, but argue that it does not undermine our ordinary beliefs and practices in the way it seems to. Because Kripke thinks that Wittgenstein endorses the skeptical paradox, he is committed to the view that Wittgenstein offers a skeptical, the rule-following paradox threatens our ordinary beliefs and practices concerning meaning because it implies that there is no such thing as meaning something by an expression or sentence. John McDowell explains this as follows and we are inclined to think of meaning in contractual terms, that is, that meanings commit or oblige us to use words in a certain way. When you grasp the meaning of the dog, for example, you know that you ought to use that word to refer to dogs. Now, if there cannot be rules governing the uses of words, as the rule-following paradox apparently shows, Kripke holds that other commentators on Philosophical Investigations have believed that the private language argument is presented in sections occurring after §243

8.
Form of life (philosophy)
–
Form of life is a technical term used by Ludwig Wittgenstein and others in the continental philosophy and philosophy of science traditions. Comments about a form of life are not explanations meant to comprehend the concept as a whole, in response to a question from an imagined interlocutor, Wittgenstein notes the following, So you are saying that human agreement decides what is false and what is true. -- It is what human beings say that is false and true and that is not agreement in opinions but in form of life. Ordinarily, humans do not step away from their activities in order to justify how or why they say and do what they say, however, their activities, when investigated in an historical way, will be found to reflect a particular form of life. When such questions do arise, an investigation will involve reminding the questioner of certain things he or she takes for granted and which. We do what we do because we assume a form of life, which gives our actions, ourselves. Form of life is what makes meaning itself possible, agamben finds earlier versions of form-of-life in monastic rules, developing from vita vel regula, regula et vita, forma vivendi, and forma vitae. The Highest Poverty, Monastic Rules and Form-of-Life, david Kishik, Wittgensteins Form of Life. ISBN9781847062239 Jesús Padilla Gálvez, Margit Gaffal, Forms of Life, ISBN9783868381221 Jesús Padilla Gálvez, Margit Gaffal, Doubtful Certainties. Ontos Verlag, Frankfurt a. M. Paris, Lancaster, New Brunswick 2012, stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Private Language, Grammar and Form of Life, in Wittgenstein Ludwig Wittgenstein. Philosophical Investigations, The German Text, with a Revised English Translation 50th Anniversary Commemorative Edition, ISBN9780631231271 Remarks on Frazers Golden Bough, a Synopsis by Robert Wesley Angelo

9.
Ludwig Wittgenstein's philosophy of mathematics
–
Ludwig Wittgenstein considered his chief contribution to philosophy to be in the philosophy of mathematics, a topic to which he devoted much of his work between 1929 and 1944. The success of Wittgensteins general philosophy has tended to displace the real debates on more technical issues, Wittgensteins initial conception of mathematics was logicist and even formalist. During the 1920s Wittgenstein turned away from philosophical matters but his interest in mathematics was rekindled when he attended in Vienna a lecture by the intuitionist L. E. J. Brouwer. During the two terms of 1938/9 Wittgenstein lectured without any notes before students for two hours twice a week, from four sets of notes made during the lectures a text has been created, presenting Wittgensteins views at that time. An editorial team prepared the edition of Wittgensteins Remarks on the Foundations of mathematics from the notes he made during the years 1937-44. The material has been arranged in order, allowing to observe some changes of emphasis or interest in Wittgensteins views over the years

10.
Linguistic turn
–
According to Rorty, who later dissociated himself from linguistic philosophy and analytic philosophy generally, the phrase the linguistic turn originated with philosopher Gustav Bergmann. Ludwig Wittgenstein, an associate of Russell, was one of the progenitors of the linguistic turn and his later work significantly departs from the common tenets of analytic philosophy and might be viewed as having some resonance in the poststructuralist tradition. In analytic philosophy, one of the results of the turn was an increasing focus on philosophy of language. Later in the century, philosophers like Saul Kripke in Naming. Decisive for the turn in the humanities were the works of yet another tradition, namely the structuralism of Ferdinand de Saussure. Influential theorists include Judith Butler, Luce Irigaray, Julia Kristeva, Michel Foucault, the power of language, more specifically of certain rhetorical tropes, in historical discourse was explored by Hayden White. These various movements often lead to the notion that language constitutes reality, the traditional view saw words as functioning labels attached to concepts. Thus differences between meanings structure our perception, there is no real chair except insofar as we are manipulating symbolic systems, thus, a large part of what we think of as reality is really a convention of naming and characterising, a convention which is itself called language. Aretaic turn Cultural turn Semiotics Neil Gross, Richard Rorty, The Making of an American Philosopher, the University of Chicago Press, Chicago and London. The Linguistic Turn, Recent Essays in Philosophical Method, the University of Chicago Press, Chicago and London. Wittgenstein, Heidegger, and the Reification of Language, clark, Elizabeth A. History, Theory, Text, Historians and the Linguistic Turn, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA. Toews, John E. Intellectual History after the Linguistic Turn, The Autonomy of Meaning, White, Hayden, Metahistory, The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth-Century Europe, Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, MD. Cornforth, Maurice, Marxism and the Linguistic Philosophy, Lawrence & Wishart, the classical critique from the left-wing standpoint

11.
Fideism
–
Fideism is an epistemological theory which maintains that faith is independent of reason, or that reason and faith are hostile to each other and faith is superior at arriving at particular truths. The word fideism comes from fides, the Latin word for faith, theologians and philosophers have responded in various ways to the place of faith and reason in determining the truth of metaphysical ideas, morality, and religious beliefs. A fideist is one who argues for fideism, there are a number of different forms of fideism. The fideist therefore urges reliance on faith rather than reason, in philosophical and religious. The fideist seeks truth, above all, and affirms that reason cannot achieve certain kinds of truth, some only claim a few religious details to be axiomatic. Says. the Son of God died, it is by all means to be believed, the statement Credo quia absurdum, is sometimes cited as an example of views of the Church Fathers, but this appears to be a misquotation of Tertullian. Martin Luther taught that faith informs the Christians use of reason, and Reason is the greatest enemy that faith has. For just as all natural endowments serve to further impiety in the godless, an eloquent tongue promotes faith, reason makes speech clear, and everything helps faith forward. Reason receives life from faith, it is killed by it, another form of fideism is assumed by Pascals Wager. Blaise Pascal invites the atheist considering faith to see faith in God as a choice that carries a potential reward. He does not attempt to argue that God indeed exists, only that it might be valuable to assume that it is true. Of course, the problem with Pascals Wager is that it does not restrict itself to a specific God, although Pascal did have in mind the Christian God as is mentioned in the following quote. In his Pensées, Pascal writes, Who then will blame Christians for not being able to give reasons for their beliefs and they declare, when they expound it to the world, that it is foolishness, stultitiam, and then you complain because they do not prove it. If they proved it, they would not keep their word, Pascal moreover contests the various proposed proofs of the existence of God as irrelevant. Considered to be the father of modern antirationalism, Johann Georg Hamann promoted a view that elevated faith alone as the guide to human conduct. Using the work of David Hume he argued that people do is ultimately based on faith. Without faith in the existence of a world, human affairs could not continue, therefore, he argued, all reasoning comes from this faith. Thus all attempts to base belief in God using Reason are in vain and he attacks systems like Spinozism that try to confine what he feels is the infinite majesty of God into a finite human creation

12.
Quietism (philosophy)
–
Quietism in philosophy is an approach to the subject that sees the role of philosophy as broadly therapeutic or remedial. Pyrrhonism represents perhaps the earliest example of an identifiably quietist position in the West, sextus Empiricus regarded Pyrrhonism not as a nihilistic attack but rather as a form of philosophical therapy, The causal principle of scepticism we say is the hope of becoming tranquil. The chief constitutive principle of scepticism is the claim that to account an equal account is opposed, for it is from this, we think. Contemporary discussion of quietism can be traced back to Ludwig Wittgenstein, J. L. Norman Malcolm, a friend of Wittgensteins, took a quietist approach to skeptical problems in the philosophy of mind. More recently, the philosophers John McDowell and Richard Rorty have taken explicitly quietist positions, ISBN 0-14-012482-9 Austin, J L. Sense and Sensibilia. “Pragmatism, Metaphysical Quietism and the Problem of Normativity, ” Philosophical Topics, ISBN 0-7100-3836-4 McDowell, John and Evans, Gareth

13.
Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus
–
The Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus is the only book-length philosophical work published by the Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein in his lifetime. G. E. Moore originally suggested the works Latin title as homage to the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus by Baruch Spinoza. Wittgenstein wrote the notes for the Tractatus while he was a soldier during World War I and completed it when a prisoner of war at Como and it was first published in German in 1921 as Logisch-Philosophische Abhandlung. The Tractatus was influential chiefly amongst the logical positivists of the Vienna Circle, such as Rudolf Carnap, Bertrand Russells article The Philosophy of Logical Atomism is presented as a working out of ideas that he had learned from Wittgenstein. The Tractatus employs a notoriously austere and succinct literary style, the work contains almost no arguments as such, but rather consists of declarative statements that are meant to be self-evident. The statements are hierarchically numbered, with seven basic propositions at the primary level, Wittgensteins later works, notably the posthumously published Philosophical Investigations, criticised many of the ideas in the Tractatus. There are seven main propositions in the text and these are, The world is everything that is the case. What is the case is the existence of states of affairs, a logical picture of facts is a thought. A thought is a proposition with a sense, a proposition is a truth-function of elementary propositions. The general form of a proposition is the form of a truth function. This is the form of a proposition. Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent, the first chapter is very brief,1 The world is all that is the case. 1.1 The world is the totality of facts, not of things,1.11 The world is determined by the facts, and by their being all the facts. 1.12 For the totality of facts determines what is the case,1.13 The facts in logical space are the world. 1.2 The world divides into facts,1.21 Each item can be the case or not the case while everything else remains the same. This along with the beginning of two can be taken to be the relevant parts of Wittgensteins metaphysical view that he use to support his picture theory of language. These sections concern Wittgensteins view that the sensible, changing world we perceive does not consist of substance, Proposition two begins with a discussion of objects, form and substance. 2 What is the case—a fact—is the existence of atomic facts,2.01 An atomic fact is a combination of objects

14.
Bertrand Russell
–
Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, OM, FRS was a British philosopher, logician, mathematician, historian, writer, social critic, political activist and Nobel laureate. At various points in his life he considered himself a liberal, a socialist, and a pacifist and he was born in Monmouthshire into one of the most prominent aristocratic families in the United Kingdom. In the early 20th century, Russell led the British revolt against idealism and he is considered one of the founders of analytic philosophy along with his predecessor Gottlob Frege, colleague G. E. Moore, and protégé Ludwig Wittgenstein. He is widely held to be one of the 20th centurys premier logicians, with A. N. Whitehead he wrote Principia Mathematica, an attempt to create a logical basis for mathematics. His philosophical essay On Denoting has been considered a paradigm of philosophy, Russell mostly was a prominent anti-war activist, he championed anti-imperialism. Occasionally, he advocated preventive nuclear war, before the opportunity provided by the monopoly is gone. He went to prison for his pacifism during World War I, in 1950 Russell was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in recognition of his varied and significant writings in which he champions humanitarian ideals and freedom of thought. Bertrand Russell was born on 18 May 1872 at Ravenscroft, Trellech, Monmouthshire and his parents, Viscount and Viscountess Amberley, were radical for their times. Lord Amberley consented to his wifes affair with their childrens tutor, both were early advocates of birth control at a time when this was considered scandalous. Lord Amberley was an atheist and his atheism was evident when he asked the philosopher John Stuart Mill to act as Russells secular godfather, Mill died the year after Russells birth, but his writings had a great effect on Russells life. His paternal grandfather, the Earl Russell, had asked twice by Queen Victoria to form a government. The Russells had been prominent in England for several centuries before this, coming to power, Lady Amberley was the daughter of Lord and Lady Stanley of Alderley. Russell often feared the ridicule of his grandmother, one of the campaigners for education of women. Russell had two siblings, brother Frank, and sister Rachel, in June 1874 Russells mother died of diphtheria, followed shortly by Rachels death. In January 1876, his father died of bronchitis following a period of depression. Frank and Bertrand were placed in the care of their staunchly Victorian paternal grandparents and his grandfather, former Prime Minister Earl Russell, died in 1878, and was remembered by Russell as a kindly old man in a wheelchair. His grandmother, the Countess Russell, was the dominant family figure for the rest of Russells childhood, the countess was from a Scottish Presbyterian family, and successfully petitioned the Court of Chancery to set aside a provision in Amberleys will requiring the children to be raised as agnostics. Her favourite Bible verse, Thou shalt not follow a multitude to do evil, the atmosphere at Pembroke Lodge was one of frequent prayer, emotional repression, and formality, Frank reacted to this with open rebellion, but the young Bertrand learned to hide his feelings

15.
G. E. Moore
–
George Edward G. E. Moore OM FBA was an English philosopher. He was, with Bertrand Russell, Ludwig Wittgenstein, and Gottlob Frege and he was Professor of Philosophy at the University of Cambridge, highly influential among the Bloomsbury Group, and the editor of the influential journal Mind. He was elected a fellow of the British Academy in 1918 and he was a member of the Cambridge Apostles, the intellectual secret society, from 1894 to 1901, and the Cambridge University Moral Sciences Club. Moore was born in Upper Norwood, Croydon, Greater London, on 4 November 1873 and his grandfather was the author Dr George Moore. His eldest brother was Thomas Sturge Moore, a poet, writer and engraver and he was educated at Dulwich College and in 1892 went up to Trinity College Cambridge to study classics for moral sciences. He became a Fellow of Trinity in 1898, and went on to hold the University of Cambridge chair of Mental Philosophy and Logic, from 1925 to 1939. Moore is best known today for his defence of ethical non-naturalism, his emphasis on common sense in philosophical method, and he was admired by and influential among other philosophers, and also by the Bloomsbury Group, but is mostly unknown today outside of academic philosophy. Moores essays are known for their clear, circumspect writing style and he was critical of modern philosophy for its lack of progress, which he believed was in stark contrast to the dramatic advances in the natural sciences since the Renaissance. Among Moores most famous works are his book Principia Ethica, and his essays, The Refutation of Idealism, A Defence of Common Sense and he was president of the Aristotelian Society from 1918-19. Paul Levy wrote in Moore, G. E. Moore, together they had two sons, the poet Nicholas Moore and the composer Timothy Moore. His influential work Principia Ethica is one of the inspirations of the movement against ethical naturalism and is partly responsible for the twentieth-century concern with meta-ethics. Moore asserted that philosophical arguments can suffer from a confusion between the use of a term in an argument and the definition of that term. He named this confusion the naturalistic fallacy, for example, an ethical argument may claim that if a thing has certain properties, then that thing is good. A hedonist may argue that pleasant things are good things, other theorists may argue that complex things are good things. Moore contends that if such arguments are correct, they do not provide definitions for the term good. The property of goodness cannot be defined and it can only be shown and grasped. Any attempt to define it will shift the problem. Moores argument for the indefinability of good is called the open-question argument

16.
John Maynard Keynes
–
John Maynard Keynes, 1st Baron Keynes CB FBA, was a British economist whose ideas fundamentally changed the theory and practice of macroeconomics and the economic policies of governments. His ideas are the basis for the school of thought known as Keynesian economics and he instead argued that aggregate demand determined the overall level of economic activity and that inadequate aggregate demand could lead to prolonged periods of high unemployment. According to Keynesian economics, state intervention was necessary to moderate boom, Keynes advocated the use of fiscal and monetary policies to mitigate the adverse effects of economic recessions and depressions. He and other economists had disputed the ability of government to regulate the business cycle favorably with fiscal policy. When Time magazine included Keynes among its Most Important People of the Century in 1999, the Economist has described Keynes as Britains most famous 20th-century economist. In addition to being an economist, Keynes was also a servant, a director of the Bank of England. John Maynard Keynes was born in Cambridge, Cambridgeshire, England and his father, John Neville Keynes, was an economist and a lecturer in moral sciences at the University of Cambridge and his mother Florence Ada Keynes a local social reformer. Keynes was the first born, and was followed by two more children – Margaret Neville Keynes in 1885 and Geoffrey Keynes in 1887, Geoffrey became a surgeon and Margaret married the Nobel Prize-winning physiologist Archibald Hill. According to the economist and biographer Robert Skidelsky, Keyness parents were loving and they remained in the same house throughout their lives, where the children were always welcome to return. Keyness mother made her childrens interests her own, and according to Skidelsky, because she could grow up with her children, they never outgrew home. In January 1889, at the age of five and a half and he quickly showed a talent for arithmetic, but his health was poor leading to several long absences. He was tutored at home by a governess, Beatrice Mackintosh, in January 1892, at eight and a half, he started as a day pupil at St Faiths preparatory school. By 1894, Keynes was top of his class and excelling at mathematics, in 1896, St Faiths headmaster, Ralph Goodchild, wrote that Keynes was head and shoulders above all the other boys in the school and was confident that Keynes could get a scholarship to Eton. In 1897, Keynes won a scholarship to Eton College, where he displayed talent in a range of subjects, particularly mathematics, classics. At Eton, Keynes experienced the first love of his life in Dan Macmillan, despite his middle-class background, Keynes mixed easily with upper-class pupils. In 1902 Keynes left Eton for Kings College, Cambridge, after receiving a scholarship for this also to read mathematics, Alfred Marshall begged Keynes to become an economist, although Keyness own inclinations drew him towards philosophy – especially the ethical system of G. E. Moore. Keynes joined the Pitt Club and was an member of the semi-secretive Cambridge Apostles society. Like many members, Keynes retained a bond to the club after graduating, before leaving Cambridge, Keynes became the President of the Cambridge Union Society and Cambridge University Liberal Club

17.
Moritz Schlick
–
Friedrich Albert Moritz Schlick was a German philosopher, physicist, and the founding father of logical positivism and the Vienna Circle. Schlick was born in Berlin to a family, his father was Ernst Albert Schlick. He studied physics at the University of Heidelberg, the University of Lausanne, and, ultimately, in 1904, he completed his dissertation essay, Über die Reflexion des Lichts in einer inhomogenen Schicht. After a year as Privatdozent at Göttingen, he turned to the study of Philosophy in Zurich, in 1907, he married Blanche Hardy In 1908, he published Lebensweisheit, a slim volume about eudaemonism, the theory that happiness is the highest ethical pursuit. His habilitation essay, Das Wesen der Wahrheit nach der modernen Logik, was published in 1910, several essays about aesthetics followed, whereupon Schlick turned his attention to problems of epistemology, the philosophy of science, and more general questions about science. In this last category, Schlick distinguished himself by publishing a paper in 1915 about Einsteins special theory of relativity, a topic only ten years old. After early appointments at Rostock and Kiel, in 1922 Schlick assumed the chair of Naturphilosophie at the University of Vienna which had previously held by Ludwig Boltzmann. Schlick displayed an unusual success in organizing talented individuals in the philosophical, when Schlick arrived in Vienna, he was invited to lead a group of scientists and philosophers who met regularly to discuss philosophical topics in the sciences. Early members included the mathematician Hans Hahn and, within a few years, they were joined by Rudolf Carnap, Herbert Feigl, Kurt Gödel, Otto Neurath, Friedrich Waismann and others. They initially called themselves the Ernst Mach Association, but forever after they have known as the Vienna Circle. In the years 1925-1926, the Thursday night group discussed recent work in the foundations of mathematics by Gottlob Frege, Bertrand Russell, and Ludwig Wittgenstein. Wittgensteins book, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, was a work that advanced, among other things, a theory of symbolism. Schlick and his group were impressed by the work, devoting considerable time to its study and, even when it was no longer the focus of their discussion. Through Schlicks influence, Wittgenstein was encouraged to consider a return to philosophy after some ten years away from the field. Schlick and Waismanns discussions with Wittgenstein continued until the latter felt that germinal ideas had been used without permission in an essay by Carnap, but he continued discussions in letters to Schlick after he no longer met with other Circle members. The truth of all other statements must be evaluated with reference to empirical evidence and this is the principle upon which members of the Vienna Circle were most clearly in agreement — with each other, as well as with Wittgenstein. Between 1926 and 1930, Schlick labored to finish Fragen der Ethik, in his 1932-33 contribution to Erkenntnis, Positivism and Realism, Schlick offered one of the most illuminating definitions of positivism as every view which denies the possibility of metaphysics. Therefore in this work he bases the positivism on a kind of epistemology which holds that the only true beings are givens or constituents of experience, also during this time, the Vienna Circle published The Scientific View of the World, The Vienna Circle as a homage to Schlick

18.
Rudolf Carnap
–
Rudolf Carnap was a German-born philosopher who was active in Europe before 1935 and in the United States thereafter. He was a member of the Vienna Circle and an advocate of logical positivism. He is considered one of the giants among twentieth-century philosophers, Carnaps father had risen from the status of a poor ribbon-weaver to become the owner of a ribbon-making factory. His mother came from stock, her father was an educational reformer and her oldest brother was the archaeologist Wilhelm Dörpfeld. As a ten-year-old, Carnap accompanied his uncle on an expedition to Greece, Carnap was raised in a religious family, but later became an atheist. He began his education at the Barmen Gymnasium. From 1910 to 1914, he attended the University of Jena, but he also studied carefully Kants Critique of Pure Reason during a course taught by Bruno Bauch, and was one of very few students to attend Gottlob Freges courses in mathematical logic. While Carnap held moral and political opposition to World War I, after three years of service, he was given permission to study physics at the University of Berlin, 1917–18, where Albert Einstein was a newly appointed professor. Carnap then attended the University of Jena, where he wrote a thesis defining a theory of space. The physics department said it was too philosophical, and Bruno Bauch of the department said it was pure physics. Carnap then wrote another thesis in 1921, with Bauchs supervision, on the theory of space in a more orthodox Kantian style, in it he makes the clear distinction between formal, physical and perceptual spaces. Freges course exposed him to Bertrand Russells work on logic and philosophy and he accepted the effort to surpass traditional philosophy with logical innovations that inform the sciences. In 1924 and 1925, he attended seminars led by Edmund Husserl, the founder of phenomenology, Carnap discovered a kindred spirit when he met Hans Reichenbach at a 1923 conference. Reichenbach introduced Carnap to Moritz Schlick, a professor at the University of Vienna who offered Carnap a position in his department, when Wittgenstein visited Vienna, Carnap would meet with him. He wrote the 1929 manifesto of the Circle, and initiated the philosophy journal Erkenntnis, the formal system of the Aufbau was grounded in a single primitive dyadic predicate, which is satisfied if two individuals resemble each other. The Aufbau was greatly influenced by Principia Mathematica, and warrants comparison with the mereotopological metaphysics A. N. Whitehead developed over 1916–29 and it appears, however, that Carnap soon became somewhat disenchanted with this book. In particular, he did not authorize an English translation until 1967, pseudoproblems in Philosophy asserted that many philosophical questions were meaningless, i. e. the way they were posed amounted to an abuse of language. An operational implication of this opinion was taken to be the elimination of metaphysics from responsible human discourse and this is the statement for which Carnap was best known for many years

19.
Frank P. Ramsey
–
Frank Plumpton Ramsey was a British philosopher, mathematician and economist who died at the age of 26. Like Wittgenstein, he was a member of the Cambridge Apostles, Ramsey was born on 22 February 1903 in Cambridge where his father Arthur Stanley Ramsey, also a mathematician, was President of Magdalene College. His mother was Mary Agnes Stanley and he was the eldest of two brothers and two sisters, and his brother Michael Ramsey, the only one of the four siblings who was to remain Christian, later became Archbishop of Canterbury. He entered Winchester College in 1915 and later returned to Cambridge to study mathematics at Trinity College, while studying mathematics at Trinity College, Ramsey became a student to John Maynard Keynes, and an active member in the Apostles, a Cambridge discussion group. In 1923, he received his bachelors degree in mathematics, passing his examinations with the result of first class with distinction, easy-going, simple and modest, Ramsey had many interests besides his scientific work. After about an hour I said ‘Margaret will you fuck with me and he, like many of his contemporaries, including his Viennese flatmate and fellow Apostle Lionel Penrose, was intellectually interested in psychoanalysis. Ramseys analyst was Theodor Reik, a disciple of Freud, as one of the justifications for undertaking the therapy, he asserted in a letter to his mother that unconscious impulses might even affect the work of a mathematician. While in Vienna, he visited Wittgenstein in Puchberg, was befriended by the Wittgenstein family, neills experimental school four hours from Vienna at Sonntagsberg. In the summer of 1924, he continued his analysis by joining Reik at Dobbiaco, Ramsey returned to England in October 1924, with John Maynard Keyness support he became a fellow of Kings College, Cambridge. Ramsey married Lettice Baker in September 1925, the taking place in a Register Office since Ramsey was, as his wife described him. Despite his atheism, Ramsey was quite tolerant towards his brother when the decided to become a priest in the Church of England. In 1926 he became a university lecturer in mathematics and later a Director of Studies in Mathematics at Kings College, the Vienna Circle manifesto lists three of his publications in a bibliography of closely related authors. When I. A. Richards and C. K. Ogden, according to Richards, he mastered the language in almost hardly over a week, although other sources show he took before that one year of German in school. Ramsey was then able, at the age of 19, to make the first draft of the translation of the German text of Wittgensteins Tractatus Logico Philosophicus, for two weeks Ramsey discussed the difficulties he was facing in understanding the Tractatus. Wittgenstein made some corrections to the English translation in Ramseys copy and some annotations, Ramsey and John Maynard Keynes cooperated to try to bring Ludwig Wittgenstein back to Cambridge. Once Wittgenstein had returned to Cambridge, Ramsey became his nominal supervisor, Wittgenstein submitted the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus as his doctoral thesis. G. E. Moore and Bertrand Russell acted as examiners, later, the three of them arranged financial aid for Wittgenstein to help him continue his research work. The contributions of Ramsey to these conversations were acknowledged by both Sraffa and Wittgenstein in their later work, suffering from chronic liver problems, Ramsey developed jaundice after an abdominal operation and died on 19 January 1930 at Guys Hospital in London at the age of 26

20.
Vienna Circle
–
In 2015, as part of its 650th anniversary, the University of Vienna organized an exhibition on the Vienna Circle. Ludwig Wittgenstein and Karl Popper were in contact to the Vienna Circle. The philosophical position of the Vienna Circle was called Logical Empiricism and it was influenced by Ernst Mach, David Hilbert, French Conventionalism, Gottlob Frege, Bertrand Russell, Ludwig Wittgenstein and Albert Einstein. The Vienna Circle was pluralistic and committed to the ideals of Enlightenment and it was unified by the aim of making philosophy scientific with the help of modern logic. Its public profile was provided by the Ernst Mach Society through which members of the Vienna Circle sought to popularize their ideas in the context of programmes for education in Vienna. During the era of Austrofascism and after the annexation of Austria by Nazi Germany most members of the Vienna Circle were forced to emigrate, the murder of Schlick in 1936 by a former student put an end to the Vienna Circle in Austria. The Vienna Circles influence on 20th-century philosophy, especially philosophy of science, Hans Hahn, the oldest of the three, was a mathematician. He received his degree in mathematics in 1902, afterwards he studied under the direction of Ludwig Boltzmann in Vienna and David Hilbert, Felix Klein and Hermann Minkowski in Göttingen. In 1905 he received the Habilitation in mathematics and he taught at Innsbruck and Vienna. Otto Neurath studied mathematics, political economy, and history in Vienna, from 1907 to 1914 he taught in Vienna at the Neue Wiener Handelsakademie. Neurath married Olga, Hahns sister, in 1911, Philipp Frank, the youngest of the group, studied physics at Göttingen and Vienna with Ludwig Boltzmann, David Hilbert and Felix Klein. From 1912, he held the chair of physics in the German University in Prague. Their meetings were held in Viennese coffeehouses from 1907 onward, Frank remembered, A number of further authors were discussed in the meetings such as Brentano, Meinong, Helmholtz, Hertz, Husserl, Freud, Russell, Whitehead, Lenin and Frege. Presumably the meetings stopped in 1912, when Frank went to Prague, Hahn left Vienna during World War I and returned in 1921. The formation of the Vienna Circle began with Hahn returning to Vienna in 1921, together with the mathematician Kurt Reidemeister he organized seminars on Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Tractatus logico-philosophicus and on Whitehead and Russell’s Principia Mathematica. Schlick had already published two important works Raum und Zeit in die gegenwärtigen Physik in 1917 and Allgemeine Erkenntnislehre in 1918, immediately after Schlick’s arrival in Vienna, he organized discussions with the mathematicians around Hahn. In 1924 Schlick’s students Friedrich Waismann and Herbert Feigl suggested to their teacher a sort of regular “evening circle”, from winter term 1924 on regular meetings were held at the Institute of Mathematics in Vienna’s Boltzmanngasse 5 on personal invitation by Schlick. These discussions can be seen as the beginning of the Vienna Circle, in addition, the group invited foreign visitors

21.
G. E. M. Anscombe
–
Gertrude Elizabeth Margaret Anscombe, FBA, usually cited as G. E. M. Anscombe or Elizabeth Anscombe, was a British analytic philosopher. She wrote on the philosophy of mind, philosophy of action, philosophical logic, philosophy of language and she was a prominent figure of analytical Thomism. Anscombe was a student of Ludwig Wittgenstein and became an authority on his work and edited and translated many books drawn from his writings, Anscombes 1958 article Modern Moral Philosophy introduced the term consequentialism into the language of analytic philosophy, and had a seminal influence on contemporary virtue ethics. Both her mother and father were involved with education and her mother was a headmistress and her father went on to head a department at Dulwich College. She graduated from Sydenham High School in 1937, and went on to read Mods & Greats at St Hughs College, Oxford, graduating with a second degree in 1939. During her first undergraduate year she converted to Roman Catholicism, and she garnered controversy when she publicly opposed Britains entry into World War II, although her father had been a soldier, and one of her brothers was to serve during the war. In 1941 she married Peter Geach, like her a Roman Catholic convert, a student of Wittgenstein, together they had three sons and four daughters. After graduating from Oxford, Anscombe was awarded a fellowship for postgraduate study at Newnham College, Cambridge. Her purpose was to attend Ludwig Wittgensteins lectures and her interest in Wittgensteins philosophy arose from reading the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus as an undergraduate. Difference of objects I express by difference of signs, as she wrote For years, I would spend time, in cafés, for example, staring at objects saying to myself, I see a packet. But what do I really see, how can I say that I see here anything more than a yellow expanse. I always hated phenomenalism and felt trapped by it. I couldnt see my way out of it but I didnt believe it and it was no good pointing to difficulties about it, things which Russell found wrong with it, for example. The strength, the nerve of it remained alive and raged achingly. It was only in Wittgensteins classes in 1944 that I saw the nerve being extracted, the central thought I have got this and she became one of Wittgensteins favourite students and one of his closest friends. Wittgenstein affectionately referred to her by the pet name old man – an exception to his dislike of academic women. Anscombe visited Wittgenstein many times after he left Cambridge in 1947 and she scandalised liberal colleagues with articles defending the Roman Catholic Churchs opposition to contraception in the 1960s and early 1970s. Later in life, she was arrested twice while protesting outside a clinic in Britain. Anscombe remained at Somerville College from 1946 to 1970 and she was also known for her willingness to face fierce public controversy in the name of her Catholic faith

22.
Norman Malcolm
–
Norman Malcolm was an American philosopher. Malcolm was born in Selden, Kansas and he studied philosophy with O. K. Bouwsma at the University of Nebraska, then enrolled as a graduate student at Harvard University in 1933. At Cambridge University in 1938-9, he met G. E. Moore, Malcolm attended Wittgensteins lectures on the philosophical foundations of mathematics throughout 1939 and remained one of Wittgensteins closest friends. Malcolms memoir of his time with Wittgenstein, published in 1958, is acclaimed as one of the most captivating. After serving in the United States Navy from 1942 to 1945, Malcolm, with his wife, Leonida and he saw a good deal of Wittgenstein during that time, and they continued to correspond frequently thereafter. In 1947, Malcolm joined the faculty at Cornell University, where he taught until his retirement, in 1949, Wittgenstein was a guest of the Malcolms in Ithaca, New York. In that year Malcolm introduced O. K. Bouwsma to Wittgenstein, Bouwsma remained close to Wittgenstein until Wittgensteins death in 1951. This work was also a response to Descartes Meditations, other than that he is known for propagating the view that common sense philosophy and ordinary language philosophy are the same. He was generally supportive of Moores theory of knowledge and certitude, though he found Moores style and his critique of Moores articles on skepticism lay the foundation for the renewed interest in common sense philosophy and ordinary language philosophy. Malcolm was also a defender of a version of the ontological argument. In 1960 he argued that the argument originally presented by Anselm of Canterbury in the chapter of his Proslogion was just an inferior version of the argument propounded in chapter three. His argument is similar to those produced by Charles Hartshorne and Alvin Plantinga, Malcolm argued that a God cannot simply exist as a matter of contingency but rather must exist in necessity if at all. He argued that if God exists in contingency then his existence is subject to a series of conditions that would then be greater than God and his works include, Ludwig Wittgenstein, A Memoir Moore and Ordinary Language Wittgenstein, A Religious Point Of View. Norman Malcolm, A Memoir, Anthony Serafini, in the journal PHILOSOPHY, published by the Royal Institute of Philosophy,68,265265, 309-324, Cambridge University Press,1993

23.
Rush Rhees
–
Rush Rhees was an American philosopher. He is principally known as a student, friend, and literary executor of the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, with G. E. M. Anscombe, he edited Wittgensteins posthumous Philosophical Investigations, a highly influential work. He was also responsible for publishing works by Wittgenstein, including Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics, Philosophische Bemerkungen, Philosophical Remarks. Rhees taught at Swansea University from 1940 to 1966, Rush Rhees was born in the United States of America on 19 March 1905, at Rochester, New York. He was the son of Benjamin Rush Rhees, a Baptist minister, author and he studied philosophy at the University of Rochester, but was expelled in 1922 for insolent questions. In 1924 he moved to Britain, where he graduated from the University of Edinburgh in 1928, in 1932 he became a research fellow at the University of Cambridge. There he impressed G. E. Moore who described him as his ablest student, and met Wittgenstein, who became a close friend, Rhees taught philosophy at Swansea University from 1940 to 1966. He has been known mainly as a Wittgenstein exegete and for his influence on his friends, colleague Peter Winch and former student, together with G. H. von Wright and G. E. M. Anscombe he was appointed by Wittgenstein as his literary executor. He was also Wittgensteins personal executor, Rhees was also influential in bringing the work of other philosophers to greater attention, notably for example the French philosopher, Simone Weil. For a time, he was visiting Professor at Kings College London and it was also a forum in which students were expected to test and sharpen their philosophical wits. He was self-effacing of his capacities and had to be persuaded to accept a professorship at Swansea where he had previously turned down promotion during his teaching career. He died on 22 May 1989, and is buried at Oystermouth Cemetery in Mumbles near Swansea

24.
Peter Winch
–
Peter Guy Winch was a British philosopher known for his contributions to the philosophy of social science, Wittgenstein scholarship, ethics, and the philosophy of religion. Winch was born on 14 January 1926, in Walthamstow, London and he attended Leyton County High School for boys, before going up St Edmund Hall, Oxford to read Philosophy, Politics and Economics. Following the outbreak of World War II, he served in the Royal Navy 1944–47 and he was a lecturer in philosophy at the Swansea University from 1951 until 1964. He was influenced by his colleagues Rush Rhees and Roy Holland, in 1964, he moved to Birkbeck College, University of London, before becoming Professor of Philosophy at Kings College London in 1967. During this period, he served as president of Aristotelian Society, in 1985 Winch moved to the United States to become Professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He died on the 27 April 1997, in Champaign, Illinois and he was survived by his wife Erika Neumann and his two sons, Christopher and David. Major influences upon Winch include Ludwig Wittgenstein, Rush Rhees, R. G. Collingwood and he gave rise to a form of philosophy that has been given the name sociologism. He also bears responsibility for a school of sociology that was prepared to accept his radical criticism of the subject. Winch saw himself as an uncompromising Wittgensteinian, in 1980 Winch published Wittgenstein’s Culture and Value, translated by himself. After the death of Rhees in 1989 he took over his position as literary executor, from Rush Rhees, Winch derived his interest in the religious writer Simone Weil. Part of the appeal was a break from Wittgenstein into a different type of philosophy which could nevertheless be tackled with familiar methods. Also Weil’s ascetic, somewhat Tolstoyan, form of religion harmonised with one aspect of Wittgenstein’s personality, at a time when most Anglo-American philosophers were heavily under the spell of Wittgenstein, Winch’s own approach was strikingly original. He took Wittgensteinian philosophy into areas of ethics and religion, which Wittgenstein himself had relatively neglected, an example is his illuminating treatment of the moral difference between someone who tries and fails to commit murder and someone who succeeds, in his essay Trying in Ethics and Action. With the decline of interest in Wittgenstein, Winch himself was increasingly neglected, Wittgenstein famously said that philosophy leaves the world as it is. Winch takes his ideas into regions that have strong moral and political implications, the Idea of a Social Science and its Relation to Philosophy, London 1958. Understanding a Primitive Society,1964, American Philosophical Quarterly I, pp

25.
Georg Henrik von Wright
–
Georg Henrik von Wright was a Finnish philosopher, who succeeded Ludwig Wittgenstein as professor at the University of Cambridge. He published in English, Finnish, German, and Swedish, von Wright was of both Finnish and 17th-century Scottish ancestry. Von Wrights writings come under two broad categories, the first is analytic philosophy and philosophical logic in the Anglo-American vein. His 1951 books, An Essay in Modal Logic and Deontic Logic, were landmarks in the rise of formal modal logic. He was an authority on Wittgenstein, editing his later works, the other vein in von Wrights writings is moralist and pessimist. During the last twenty years of his life, under the influence of Oswald Spengler, Jürgen Habermas and his best known article from this period is entitled The Myth of Progress, and it questions whether our apparent material and technological progress can really be considered progress. In the last year of his life, among his other honorary degrees and he considered this his best and most personal work. ProtoTractatus—An Early Version of Tractatus Logico- Philosophicus, ogden with Comments on the English Translation of the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. Letters to Russell, Keynes and Moore, remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics. Remarks on the Philosophy of Psychology, last Writings on the Philosophy of Psychology, Vol.1. Von Wright also edited extracts from the diary of David Pinsent, a Portrait of Wittgenstein as a Young Man, From the Diary of David Hume Pinsent 1912-1914, ISBN 978-0-63117-5117. Obituary – The Guardian G. H. von Wright – Britannica. com Georg Henrik von Wright in 375 humanists, faculty of Arts, University of Helsinki,13 May 2015

King's College, Cambridge. Keynes's grandmother wrote to him saying that, since he was born in Cambridge, people will expect him to be clever.

Keynes's colleague, David Lloyd George. Keynes was initially wary of the "Welsh Wizard," preferring his rival Asquith, but was impressed with Lloyd George at Versailles; this did not prevent Keynes from painting a scathing picture of the then-prime minister in his Economic Consequences of the Peace.